Identification and Equivalence of Terms Related to Beef Eating Quality: Ontologies and Terminological Tools.

The growing demand for high-quality meat has led to the development of a grading system aimed at assessing and improving the quality of beef. In Europe, the mandatory grading system is the EUROP grid, which focuses on carcass conformation and fattening. In contrast, the grading system based on the Australian methodology (Meat Standards Australia - MSA) predicts sensory quality previously assessed by non-expert consumers. However, to develop a system based on this methodology, it is first necessary to have a good understanding of the terminology and the relevance of the evaluation criteria. In general, to facilitate communication among stakeholders, ontologies are used to describe knowledge domains. Some technical terminologies are ambiguous and vary between countries, especially for meat products, which requires careful information collection to create an accurate database. The objective of this work is to identify, describe, and compare definitions from existing ontologies and databases for technical terms used in the evaluation of beef carcasses according to the Australian methodology. Fifty-six terms have been identified and grouped into eight categories. Their definitions extracted from about twenty terminological tools have been compared. The benefits of these comparisons include a better understanding of the domain, the possibility of choosing more precise variables, and improvements in research and communication. However, there are still challenges in finding specific terms, and it is essential to standardize commercial language to facilitate collaboration among meat industry professionals. In summary, it is necessary to create a single source with robust definitions for MSA grading system terms, as well as a global ontology for beef meat quality to standardize the analyses.